


Cigarette After Dark

by red_rook



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23858176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_rook/pseuds/red_rook
Summary: Hotshot college student Adora keeps coming to visit former hotshot, current dropout Catra, at night despite them being enemies and despite Catra hating her guts.
Relationships: Adora & Bow & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora & Bow (She-Ra), Adora & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Bow & Glimmer (She-Ra)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 180





	1. Chapter 1

**Me:**

You awake?

**catra alvarez:**

obviously

**Me:**

I’m coming over in 20.

**catra alvarez:**

good for u

bring vodka

**Me:**

But you know I hate vodka.

**catra alvarez:**

since when have i ever given a shit about what u love or hate

bring it or else

It’s past midnight on a Thursday, a week away from finals. Adora should be shin-deep in studying the mammoth amounts of material with Bow and Glimmer, back at their prestigious research university. But instead, she’s walking alone down the streets of downtown, hands in her white hoodie’s pockets, moving fast before the rational part of her brain turns her right back around towards safety. 

She knows the way to the apartment well, could probably walk there blindfolded without much effort. Which is pretty surprising considering the apartment’s owner had once blocked her on every single social media account. For three years.

Bow and Glimmer still haven’t figured out where Adora disappeared off to at nights at least once a week, maybe more. She hadn’t told them because Adora could picture easily Glimmer’s face of rage and disgust if she’d found out that Adora was ‘still wasting time with that crazy bitch’, as she’d once ranted after a particularly nasty argument Adora and Catra had had. 

So she’d lied, said it was an extra side gig she’d taken on to save up a pittance of money, and they’d believed her easily. Without question. She swallowed down the hot spike of guilt that always arose whenever she was a shitty friend to them. Which was much more often than she’d like.

Adora knocks on Catra’s door, and after a few minutes her ex-best friend opens the door. She ignores Adora’s too-cheerful greeting and walks back inside without locking the door, knowing that Adora will lock it for her. She always does.

“Did you bring the alcohol?” Catra rasps. She’s curled up in a chair at her tiny rickety kitchen table. Adora takes the other, squeakier chair, and produces a bottle of Grey Goose. Catra has the shot glasses already ready. She has a matching pair: they are a translucent black and have small pointy glass ears, with painted-on whiskers. Adora wonders if it means anything, that Catra always offers her one of the pair and drinks out of the other herself. She would never risk asking.

“Cheers,” Adora says, holding up her glass. Catra rolls her eyes, but obliges and clinks her own shot against Adora’s. They down it together, Adora’s face screwing up at the taste and Catra’s face twisting into a grin at Adora’s discomfort. Once the burn has settled in their throats, Catra turns to face her window, with Adora mirroring her. 

This has become their tradition in the past six months: Adora coming to Catra’s place in the night to watch the stars and artificial city lights in silence, always with alcohol in hand. Something about the ritual appeases the roiling anxiety and grief and self-hatred that churns Adora’s gut and burns her chest when she tries to sleep. It is only after she drinks and watches the night sky with Catra that she can rest for more than three hours at a time.

Adora still doesn’t know why Catra lets her come over. It’s another question that she’s too afraid to ask. 

Catra lights a cigarette. Also a part of the tradition.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Adora whispers out into the still, grey shadows that have settled over Catra’s tiny apartment. 

Catra says nothing in response, her heterochromatic eyes only narrowing slightly in response as she flicks the ash from her cigarette. She takes a deep, soulful drag, like the poisonous smog is more precious to her than anything else in the world. 

“I’m serious, you know,” Adora presses, more loudly. “Can’t you at least vape instead? It’s better for you, sorta, and it smells a hell of a lot better.”

Catra pours herself another shot, affixing Adora with a look of complete disdain. “You’re not my doctor, so stop pretending like you care.”

“I might not be a doctor, but I’m majoring in biomedical engineering.” Adora half-grins. “Kinda counts, really. And I _do_ care.”

“Keep talking and I’ll punt you out my apartment window.”

The threat, though meaningless- as if Catra could take on one of Bright Moon University’s varsity women’s soccer players- is enough to keep Adora quiet. Their exchange has already been more long than than any (at least, non-hostile) conversations at any point in time for over three years. Adora has broken the sacred silence that keeps alive their very uneasy truce, threatening to break it all over again. 

So Adora surprises even herself when, five minutes later, she asks, “How’s work?”

Catra coughs slightly on her smoke, then glares at her. “Dude, I work a dead-end waitress job at a lame restaurant with garbage food. How do you _think_ work is?”

“Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

“Okay.”

Moments later, Catra douses the rest of her cigarette in Adora’s unfinished shot, before Adora can slap her hand away. Cursing, Adora pours the rest of the shot out in the sink and throws the sodden ashy remains in the trash. When she returns, Catra has a nasty grin on her face: the one that indicates her sadistic desire to scratch at old wounds.

“How are your adorable little friends at uni? Glitter and that other loser.”

“You know their names,” Adora responds unflinchingly. She takes a sip of vodka. “They’re great, thanks for asking. Bow just won an archery award in his club, and Glimmer-”

“Surely you have to know I couldn’t care less,” Catra interrupts, lighting another cigarette. “Sounds like you’re having a blast without me in the way.” The words are like a lit match: designed, intricately and deliberately, to spark ablaze the pool of gasoline that has become their relationship.

Adora breathes out slowly, mirroring Catra’s own exhale of smoke. She will not take the bait. “If I were having a blast without you, would I come see you in the middle of the night like this?”

“Dunno.” Her old friend traces the rim of her shot glass with one long black fingernail. All of her nails are long, except for two on her left hand. Adora wonders, against her will, which girl she keeps those nails short for. “You didn’t come crawling back until senior year. You left me in the dust for almost all of your college career, so it doesn’t seem to be out of the question, does it?”

“I didn’t _come crawling back_ ,” Adora retorts hotly. She hates how after all these years it’s _still_ so easy for Catra to get inside her head. “You’re the one who blocked me- you know what? No. I’m not doing this. Let’s just go back to drinking.”

“You started it,” Catra shoots back, but acquiesces. The bottle of vodka Adora brought over is running low. Catra clambers up nimbly onto her kitchen counter to reach at a cabinet. She returns to the table, half-full tequila bottle in hand. Adora stifles a giggle at how, well, catlike she is. The vodka is finally starting to make her feel slightly spacey. 

Before she can stop herself, she asks, “Are you seeing anyone?”

Catra laughs out loud at that. “You are so fucking gay.”

“No! I was just wondering because, uh, your nails. Why’re you assuming it’s because I’m gay? Maybe I’m straight. Maybe I have a boyfriend.”

“Oh, _please_ , Adora. You are about as straight as my hair is in the morning.” Catra smirks, running a hand through her wavy dark hair. Adora flushes. “Why do you care if I’m hooking up with anyone? Have you finally reached your sexual awakening at the tender young age of twenty?”

“Fuck you, Catra.”

“I’m good, thanks.” Catra leans in, lips curled in a self-satisfied way, until they are nearly nose-to-nose. For a moment, Adora’s heart thumps in a strange, uncomfortable way. Then Catra blows a cloud of cigarette smoke in Adora’s face.

Had Adora not been tipsy, she may have punched Catra. Unfortunately, her movements are uncoordinated and she instead makes a flimsy swing at Catra, which is easily blocked. 

“God, you dickhead!” Catra is howling with laughter, rocking back and forth on her chair’s flimsy legs. “I can’t stand you!”

Catra stiffens at that, and Adora quickly curses herself for saying it. “If you can’t stand me, then leave.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, come on...”

“Like how you didn’t mean it when you got me expelled?” The words are enough to sober Adora up immediately, and images from the worst night of her entire life suddenly flash through her mind. Images that are the reason she stays up at night, three years later.

“I saved your life that night. Why can’t you understand that?”

“What kind of fucking life is this? I’m stuck in a shitty apartment with no job mobility for the rest of my life, hating myself and everything else. I’d rather just be dead and done with it, thanks.”

“So I was supposed to just let you- let you- overdose?” The word alone sends a wracking shudder through Adora’s whole body. She feels bile rise in her throat.

“And what’s worse is, after you damned me to live like this,” Catra forges on, loudly, “you just left me to rot at the hospital, and at the college council hearings. Instead of being there for me, you were screwing around with your new buddies, like I was just a piece of trash that never meant anything to you.”

“We’ve been over this! You’re the one who told me you didn’t need me there when I tried to visit!” 

“Well, I was lying, _obviously!_ ” 

This is the first time that Catra has admitted that, and Adora feels the blow as keenly as if it were a punch to the gut. It leaves her speechless. After a long, hard stare, Catra stands up abruptly, and walks over to the window, pressing her forehead against the glass. Adora is grateful for this: it allows her hot, shameful tears to slip down her face unnoticed. In silence, they watch the stars together again, the tiny pinpricks of light framed by Catra’s curls. _They make the sky even more beautiful,_ Adora thinks.

Finally, she says, in a tiny, slightly choked-up voice, “Catra…”

“We don’t need to talk about it.” Catra’s voice is level and low. “You already knew why I hate you. Just leave it at that.”

“But I don’t want you to hate me.” Adora, even to herself, sounds plaintive.

“Tough.” 

“Why aren’t you telling me to get out?”

“Get out, then.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Then don’t. I don’t care.” There is little venom in her words.

Quietly, Adora gets up from her chair, and comes over to Catra at the window. Catra flinches when Adora’s shoulder bumps hers, but moves aside so they can watch the night side-by-side. Adora doesn’t dare touch her again, knowing how easily Catra can rip her open if she did.

Instead, Catra is the one to eventually rest her head on Adora’s shoulder. Adora draws in a sharp breath, but doesn’t move. 

“You’re so stupid,” Catra mumbles. 

“Yeah.” Adora smiles, despite everything.

“I can’t stand you either, for the record.”

“Thanks for putting up with me anyway.”

For the first time, Adora has stayed over long enough for the sun to begin to rise. The sight is sublime, grey melting into gold and orange and blue. It’s healing to look at.

“You should go, for real.” Catra’s voice breaks Adora’s reverie. With a snap of anxiety, she remembers Glimmer and Bow and finals and projects. “I know it’s finals week soon. Go get your 4.0, loser.”

“Okay.” Adora slips away from the other girl, heading for the door. “I’m sorry,” she says again, after a short moment.

“Bring more alcohol next time,” is Catra’s noncommittal response.

“I will. Promise.” 

Then the door shuts behind Adora, and Catra is gone once more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yall wanted more so i delivered lmao

The first time Adora sees Catra after her expulsion is on a busy main street at night, full of Christmas shoppers and drunken revelers. Adora herself is out to buy Bow and Glimmer, her new friends, matching plushies. They’d both gone home for winter break, while Adora had gotten special permission from the dean to stay at Bright Moon. She’d refused both their offers to stay with them, terrified of being a burden. Besides, it was good to be alone for a change. Let her collect her thoughts after the horrible events that had happened in October. 

An icy wind starts up, blowing her scarf back and chilling Adora’s nose; it was probably pink, now, which she hated. Catra would call her ‘Rudolph’ whenever her nose went red from the cold, she reminisced. The memory hurts.

And then she sees her, across the street, bundled up in fuzzy clothes- Catra had always despised winter- and then their eyes meet. Catra’s widen with surprise, and then narrow again.

“Catra!” Adora shouts, knowing that people are staring. She doesn’t care. “Catra!”

Catra disappears into the throng. Adora’s ready to jaywalk across the street in order to get to her, to know that Catra’s doing okay, to touch her and hug her and laugh with her like they once did only months ago. But three cars rush by before she can dash across the street and once they are gone, Catra is long gone as well.

Adora sends four texts in quick succession to Catra after that night. The fourth one never delivers.

The second time Adora sees Catra is at a college bar, at two AM. She’s with Bow and Glimmer, and the three of them are having great fun experimenting with cocktails. Bow has a cosmopolitan, Glimmer has a sex on the beach, and Adora has a daiquiri. 

“These cost so much money,” Adora grouses, sipping the rum cocktail. 

“Yeah, but they taste so good,” Bow eyes his drink dreamily. “I can’t stand straight alcohol.”

“Same,” Glimmer chimes in. “It’s so gross. Like, imagine drinking vodka without adding anything to it. How can you stand that?”

“Some people can,” Adora replies, reminiscing. Catra could drink anyone under the table, even back in high school. Adora had once watched her down half a bottle of whiskey, stand up without swaying at all, and then dare Adora to drink the rest. She had taken her up on the dare, and had supremely regretted it an hour later when she’d puked her guts out in the toilet. Catra had always been the braver, stronger one of the two of them.

So why wouldn’t she just  _ talk  _ to Adora?

Then, as if she’d summoned her with her thoughts, Catra walks in. 

Adora stands up so quickly, her chair skitters back. Bow and Glimmer look around wildly to see who the aggressor is, and when Glimmer sees Catra, she stands up too. Bow, on his part, is nervously eyeing the bartender and draining his cosmopolitan as fast as humanly possible.

Catra strides right up to their table, a sneer on her lips.

“Hey, Adora.”

“What are you doing here?” Glimmer snaps at the same time Adora says “What the hell?”

“Damn!” Catra laughs, but the sound isn’t bright or happy. “What’s gotten into you, Glitter? You’re less of a pushover than I remember.”

“You blocked me! On everything! Why?” Adora hates that her voice sounds pleading, and hates even more that Catra immediately hears her weakness. It makes her grin wider.

“Call off your attack dog,” Catra retorts, jerking her chin at Glimmer. “Why can’t I block you? It’s a free country. If I want to block cowards, I will.”

Again, Adora and Glimmer interrupt each other with cries of “I’m not a coward!” and “I’m not her  _ attack dog _ , you b-” respectively.

“Guys. Guys. Can we please keep it down?” Bow begs. He’s finished Glimmer’s drink as well at this point. “I don’t wanna be kicked out of this bar! That leaves only, like, three bars in this area that don’t suck.”

“No one asked for your input, twink,” Catra says smoothly. “You  _ are _ a coward, Adora. Hiding behind medical amnesty when you were just as much to blame for that night as I was.”

“You have  _ no right  _ to say that to her!” Glimmer yells, facing up to Catra while Adora fades, the bar music turning strange as her brain goes foggy from the accusation. “You’re so ungrateful and obnoxious-”

“If I’m wrong, why isn’t Adora denying it?” Catra’s eyes are wild, and seeing them: golden brown and blue, so uniquely hers, breaks Adora from the mind-fog. Fresh anger bubbles up in her gut.

“You were the only one out of us to take drugs that night. No one forced you to be irresponsible! And for the record, I wasn’t even  _ thinking  _ about medical amnesty. I would’ve called 911 even if it would’ve gotten me expelled too.”

Catra snorts. “And risk your precious scholarship? Stop lying.”

Maybe it’s the alcohol. Maybe it’s the months of pent up hurt and rage about suddenly being cut out of her best friend’s life for an unknown wrong. Or maybe it’s that same need she had felt last time, to just touch Catra, to connect with her the way she used to. Adora lunges forward at her ex-best friend, who stumbles back, arms instinctively raising to protect herself.

Amid cries of “Adora, no!” and “Adora, YES!” from Bow and Glimmer, Catra recovers and surges against Adora, shoving her against the table. Adora cries out when her spine hits wood. The sound makes Catra freeze for just long enough for Glimmer to tackle her. 

“Get-off-of-me!” Catra wheezes as Glimmer cocks her fist back for a punch.

“Don’t!” Adora shouts, getting on her knees to pull Glimmer away, and that’s when it happens. She feels four red-hot streaks of pain perpendicular to her jaw, and sees blood on the tips of Catra’s fingernails.

Catra’s eyes are huge, and her mouth gapes at the damage she’s done. Glimmer, too, freezes, looking back and forth between Catra and Adora with mounting horror.

Then Catra scrambles up onto her feet and  _ runs. _

Two of the nail marks heal over completely, but two leave very faint darker outlines against her skin. Whenever Adora sees them in the mirror, she touches them and thinks of Catra’s eyes the night she had almost died: blank, lifeless, terrifying. She thinks of how, after they’d taken her away on an ambulance, she’d cried so hard she threw up. 

The third time is three years later, a week into the first semester of senior year. Adora is alone on a park bench, head in her hands, with the crumpled rejection of her honors thesis proposal in one fist. Dr. Hope, her advisor, had had a completely neutral expression, as per usual for her, when she’d handed her the rejection. Desperate not to show her practically robotic advisor her crushing disappointment, Adora had bit her lip to the point where it bled.

Not even soccer could cheer her up: because she was a senior, the captain had sidelined her so she could ‘focus on studying’. How the hell was she meant to focus on studying when the proposal she’d been developing for  _ months  _ had been deemed worthless? As for Glimmer and Bow… well, things had started to get rocky with Glimmer, and Adora is sure that bothering Glimmer with her failure was the last thing Glimmer wanted to see, or needed to see for that matter.

What was wrong with her? Why had not just one, but two of Adora’s closest friendships become so wrong and difficult? Why wasn’t she smart enough to come up with a good honors thesis? Why couldn’t she do anything right?

A sob escapes her lips, and then she is instantly overwhelmed, curling up into a miserable ball on a lonely park bench on a sunny day, crying her eyes out like she’d had three years’ worth of tears saved up inside of her. She cries so hard that she doesn’t realize someone has sat down next to her until they speak. 

It’s Catra. 

“Hey, hey,” Catra murmurs, soft and perfect and grounded, and she pulls the shaking Adora into her arms. “Hey… Breathe, baby, it’s okay. I’ve got you. It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

Adora buries her head into Catra’s shoulder and just  _ cries.  _ Catra still smells vaguely like her favorite cinnamon soap, the way she always had. And this time she doesn’t run, doesn’t snarl; she is just there, the way she always had been, the way she was meant to be. 

Catra holds her tight until Adora has run out of tears, rubbing circles on her back, and then when Adora’s breath stops hitching she switches to stroking her hair. Something about the way Catra touches her is different from Glimmer or Bow’s hugs. It makes her feel whole. It makes her realize she has been missing something she hadn’t even realized had been gone in the first place. When Catra finally lets go, she has to hold back sounds of protest.

“Hey, Adora,” says Catra.

“Sorry,” Adora replies instantly in a nasally voice. “About, um, crying all over you.”

Catra smirks. “Don’t think this means I like you. Consider it repayment for the time I clawed open your face.”

“I started that fight, though,” Adora points out. “I kinda deserved it, really. Did you get banned from that bar for life, too?”

Her old friend rolls her eyes. “Yeah, but whatever. That bar sucks anyway. The drinks are way too sweet.” She doesn’t pry about why Adora was sitting alone sobbing on a park bench, and for that Adora is supremely grateful.

“I remember you liked alcohol on its own. I guess you still do, huh?”

“Duh. And you? I hope your lame new friends haven’t made you into a pussy about drinking.”

“They’re not lame,” Adora insists, weakly, and then thinks of Glimmer and sighs. “You know I wasn’t mad at you about that fight at the bar. It’s not like you did it on purpose.”

“I don’t know that, Adora.” Catra’s eyes, amber and blue, are as unyielding as ever. “In fact, I don’t know you very well at all.”

“You  _ do  _ know me. We were best friends for so long! I still care about you. I still… I still…” She can’t find the words: they seem to have gotten stuck halfway through her throat.

“Don’t,” Catra says simply. “If you’re done crying, I’m gonna go.” 

“Wait,” Adora says. “What’s the real reason you stopped to help me?”

“I told you already.”

“Be honest.”

“Fine.” Catra huffs, and then runs her hand through her hair, unexpectedly looking defeated. “I don’t know. I don’t know why. Happy?”

“Not particularly.” Adora smiles at her sadly. “But, thanks. I guess I owe you one.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Catra replies flatly. “Next time you have a nervous breakdown, try not to do it in the park. You’re scaring the children.” She waves a hand airily at the expanse of grass in front of them, where only an old couple and their dog are visible.

Adora laughs. “I’ll try.”

WIthout a goodbye, Catra gets up and walks away. Adora watches her disappear into the distance, until she becomes a tiny speck that melts into the sky. 

Hours later, she receives the first texts she’s gotten from her former best friend in three years.

**catra alvarez:**

if u ever have another big freakout like that 

text me

u can crash at my new place i guess

**Me:**

Can I come even if I’m not having a big freakout?

**catra alvarez:**

don’t push it

Adora grins at her phone. Maybe everything really was going to be okay.


End file.
